


such a constellation was he

by thelilacfield



Series: there is no world where i am not yours [18]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Stardust Fusion, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27957107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilacfield/pseuds/thelilacfield
Summary: Wanda has always been told that love creeps up on a person. That one day you could look at a person and see them haloed in gold and realise that you want to spend the rest of your life with them. And she had always daydreamed of that moment, thinking it would be with one of the boys she was schooled with, or perhaps a stranger in a town square a long way from tiny, cobblestoned Westview.She never thought it would be with a crimson-skinned man made of metal and magic, when she looked up at him across a chessboard on a flying pirate ship and he took her breath away.
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Series: there is no world where i am not yours [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859725
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	such a constellation was he

**A/N:** AU-dvent day 8! A _Stardust_ AU that has sat unfinished in my google drive since 2017, so I hope bringing it to the light of day finally is a good idea!

Best I could figure from Google Translate, Clypea (you'll see) is Latin for shield. Seemed only appropriate to name a magical land made from infinity stones after SHIELD.

This is also the only only time you will ever catch me writing Wanda as Magneto's daughter - it just works too well for this AU :D

I'm on Tumblr and Twitter **@mximoffromanoff** if anybody wants to chat about all things scarletvision! Enjoy, and please let me know with a comment if you do :)

* * *

Our fairytale begins when a man being dragged to prison for practicing magic is noticed marring the balmy spring day with his coarse language by a young woman named Magda. Dark-eyed and dark-haired, raised in the orphanage by the pink-cheeked and gently smiling women who replaced a mother she'd never known, her attentions are drawn from the lines of chalk she was carving into the stones when shouting fills the quiet street. Shades are pulled away from windows, doors opened and people pause in running their errands to watch the policemen marching him down the street, looking like the very picture of a criminal with his wild hair, crazed eyes and ragged clothes, his feet dragging over the cobbles as he kicks and screams.

Night falls quickly on the whispers of a village enthralled by gossip, and Victoria creeps into Magda's room an hour after lights out, fully-dressed and using Magda's well-polished mirror to apply scarlet lipstick. "Damon asked me to meet him out on the hill," she says softly, her eyes soft and bright with the potential of first love.

"And you want me to make sure no one notices you're missing?" Magda asks wearily, leaning up on her elbows and watching Victoria stand straight and admire her slender reflection in a red dress that she must have been gifted by the man who's been disturbing her sleep night after night tossing pebbles at the wrong window.

Victoria laughs, that bell-like laugh that attracted Damon in the first place - and a dozen other young men before him - and says, "No, silly, I want you to come with me! Damon has a friend, much shyer than him, who thinks you're beautiful. You must meet him, his name is Andrew."

Magda has never been eager to join on Victoria's schemes, barely refraining from rolling her eyes at every boy her closest friend in the orphanage has been batting her pale eyelashes at since the age of fourteen, but the thought of her own beau sets her heart fluttering. Seemingly in a daze of a daydream, she dresses to Victoria's specifications, a dress from years past that now fits her far more provocatively, and follows the girl out of the house, avoiding creaky floorboards and the glow of the candles.

Stars fill the sky as Victoria leads her through the cold night to the hill that holds the grandest houses of the town, behind the neat gardens into the beginning of the dark woods which separate them from the next town. Damon is waiting for them, his equally golden head looking perfectly matched with Victoria's when she kisses him in greeting, and Magda gazes at the silent redheaded boy seated at the corner of the picnic spread, suppressing a shiver of wonder at the champagne glasses shining in the moonlight.

"So, what did you girls think of the commotion today?" Damon asks, feeding Victoria strawberries and smiling at her in some besotted manner. "My father told me the man was a mad scientist, taken in for trying to experiment on people with magic."

"I read that magic is just science no one understands yet," Magda says, resisting the urge to turn her nose up at this little rich boy, given every advantage and moulded into a person she would like nothing more than to hate. "Bruce Banner wrote it."

"Clearly he didn't understand science either, since he died in a laboratory explosion," Damon says snidely, and Victoria giggles in admiration, leaning into him. "My father says the scientist is named Strucker, came from another country and claims he found an infinity stone on the journey."

Magda can't help the gasp that escapes. "An infinity stone?" she whispers, remembering stories heard at the knees of the women who look after her, telling them to younger girls when she was a little older and seeing their awed faces. "But they're magic! They give people the powers, make them into beings greater than humans. They power Clypea!"

"They're stories, the man was clearly crazy," Damon says.

"I thought you'd grown out of believing in fairytales, Magda," Victoria says with an unkind laugh, and Magda bristles.

A soothing hand is laid over hers, and she turns to Andrew smiling shyly at her and offering her a small slice of meat pie. "I always loved hearing the stories of the infinity stones when I was young," he tells her. "The creatures who weren't of our world, who found them and brought them together to create a kingdom for people with powers. Did you know the stories say portals to Clypea can be found on nights of full red moons?" Damon scoffs, but Magda smiles, enchanted.

Andrew pours her champagne that fizzes in her nose and bubbles into her head, making her laughs louder and her tongue looser. When Victoria and Damon wander into the woods alone together, she sits and tells him of her childhood as an orphan, her hopes that her mother would return to claim her or her father would arrive out of the blue, a rich merchant or a noble soldier. He listens patiently, and she gazes into his grey eyes and waits for her heart to call his name. But it does not, not the whole night, even when the two men walk her back to the orphanage and Andrew leans in to kiss her as Damon presses Victoria into the doorframe.

A proposal comes on the heels of her eighteenth birthday, a home in the richer part of town and a promise to become the respected wife of a local businessman. Andrew talks with excitement of their wedding, fills a guest list and sets his housekeeper to creating the perfect menu, imagines telling their children the tales of the infinity stones when they lie in bed together late at night, but she cannot find excitement in her heart.

Sixteen weeks remain before the day signalling the rest of her life as she walks alone in the village, thinking of the white dress which the tailor must take in again as she keeps losing weight and her anxious fiancé, who wants to know what troubles her. How can she tell the sweet, shy boy who fell for her that she doesn't want to spend her life at his side? Victoria and Damon are married already, living in bliss and expecting a child. She has to follow on the heels of her friend, though their relationship has soured since the night Magda joined them on the hill.

She walks to the wall which marks the edge of the town, and sits there quietly, admiring the dazzling full moon above her, a blush at its edges. A chill takes her as the wind whistles through the trees, and she draws her clothes closer around her, a surge of misery rising in her throat. She has always been taught that she would take her place in society only by enchanting a rich man, and she has. Happiness was supposed to be tied into that, and yet she cries alone while Andrew sleeps, and retreats into the copies of the infinity stone tales she wrote out as a child, imagining one of the heroes of those stories taking her away from her miserable life.

Sleep must take her, for when she wakes the sun is high in the sky and she is lying on the side of the road. Two dark eyes stare down at her, and her heart sinks to think of having to once again pin her smile on for her fiancé. "I am Groot?"

She rights herself, picking grass out of her hair, and barely restrains a scream upon seeing not Andrew, but a tree looking down at her. The branches curl into what appear to be hands, and the creature blinks at her. "I am Groot?"

"Groot!" And she rubs her eyes desperately, hard enough to hurt, for she must be dreaming. There is no other reasonable explanation for the creature that runs towards the tree, a rodent with what appears to be a weapon slung over its back. "You idiot, I told you not to wander off! You're way too close to the portal."

"I am Groot."

"I don't _care_ if you saw a bird-" The creature cuts itself off when it notices Magda curled on the ground, and its lips curl back in a snarl that exposes small, sharp teeth. "What are you looking at, lady?"

Sure now that she is dreaming, Magda sneers at the creature and says, "A rodent."

And then the weapon is pointed at her, its tip gleaming threateningly, and the creature growls out, "I ain't no rodent, lady. You're gonna regret saying that."

"I am Groot."

"I _know_ she's clearly lost! People wander off all the time, it's no skin off our backs to leave 'em lost!"

"I am Groot."

The tree gazes longer at the rodent, who lets out a cry of anger and kicks hard at a nearby tuft of grass before tucking away his weapon. "My partner here insists bouncers are supposed to help people, not just let them find their own way back," he says, and holds out a paw to her. "Name's Rocket."

She stares at the paw, wide-eyed, and Rocket withdraws it with a sigh. "Some people just have no manners," he murmurs, more to himself than her. "Listen, lady, how much did you have last night?" Her silence continues, and he rolls his eyes. "Honestly, everyone needs to learn to watch how much of that juice they have, it's lethal. C'mon, the festival's this way. People are all set up, they'd hate to miss an opportunity to con you out of money."

"I am Groot."

"I don't care what you think of Slattery's direction, those ticket prices are a joke."

The unlikely duo continue bickering as Magda follows them, growing more unsure with every step that this is truly a dream. The sky is bright with sunlight, the grass is soft beneath her feet and her mind is not so creative as to have her dream of a tree who speaks only three words and a rodent with firm grasp of English and even firmer grasp on the bright metal weapon in his hands, who apparently understands the tree. "My name is Magda," she finally says, and Rocket turns to look at her.

"Well, Magda, you better get back in the crowds and stay off the juice tonight," he says. "You might not find two nice guys like us come to rescue you tomorrow."

Her mind whirls as she looks around her in the busy street. Two women, one green-skinned and one blue-skinned and bald, walk arm in arm and wave to Rocket and the tree as the pair stalk past them. A boy stands at a stall blowing ice from his mouth into fantastical shapes, to the delight of a group of children who surround his stall. A green-skinned and dark-haired giant lifts stalls into place, watched closely by a man made of metal, gleaming red and gold. A girl flicks out a hand and creates a glowing portal, drops an apple into it and catches it from another portal which materialises above her, to scattered applause.

Her attentions are drawn to a nearby stall, contraptions made of metal clicking melodically together, each one extraordinary, far advanced from anything in the village she has made home. But the piece that she finds enchanting is a flower, extraordinarily detailed, a rose woven in gold and silver.

"Now, child, we look with our eyes, not our hands," comes a silken voice when she reaches to touch it. The man standing behind the stall makes her shiver, reminding her of the men she was warned about at the orphanage. He smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes, which are hard as steel. "Now, that pretty trinket will cost you fifty."

"I'm afraid I'm not from here, sir," she says. "I don't have any money."

His smile slips then, leaving behind only a mask which is disconcerting in its blackness. "I can't abide you out of towners," he snaps, and then turns. "Erik! Take care of this girl!"

Magda's breath catches at the young boy who comes forward as the man stalks away, sleeves rolled up over muscled forearms and enchanting eyes betraying sadness, but the set of his mouth softening as he meets her gaze. "I didn't see you around yesterday," he says softly.

"I arrived late," she says, unable to tear her gaze from his. This is what those novels that Victoria had her begin to read meant when they talked about love at first sight - that lightning bolt through the heart, the way her skin feels warm, the way her legs seem too weak to hold her weight. "Why is the store owner so rude?"

Erik's face darkens. "Shaw is only in this to dupe people out of money," he says. "I work for him, crafting these machines. I can control metal, I was born with the power." As if to demonstrate, he raises a hand and her locket flies into his hand. He flicks it open with an almost dismissive gesture, gazes passively at the picture of Andrew's blandly smiling face within, and she wonders if he can hear how fast her heart is beating. "You know, I could give you that flower without taking your money," he says, tossing the locket aside.

"And what would you ask for it?" she asks, and he smiles, eyes gleaming.

"A kiss," he says, and she doesn't hesitate in leaning across the booth and pressing her lips to his. It is the perfect kiss, just as she dreamed of reading of starcrossed romances, her whole being singing with joy and colour exploding behind her eyes and her heart seeming ready to sprout wings and fly away.

"I'm Magda," she says when they break apart, and he gives her a private smile.

"Once I've packed the stall away for Shaw at the end of the trading day, he allows me free time to drink with the others my age," he says. "Meet us in The Ant and The Wasp."

Magda wanders around in a daze, the metal rose tucked tightly into her hands, buys new clothes from a stall, tight at her waist and short at her legs. The Ant and The Wasp is a pub, the name gleaming gold above the arched doorway, and Erik waits outside with two other men and a girl. He introduces them to her as Charles, a dark-haired boy with a charming smile, Raven, a blue-skinned girl whose red hair curls against her skin, and Hank, a boy with kind eyes behind dense blue fur who shakes her hand first.

"You're engaged, then?" Raven asks when their drinks have been delivered, the bartender a grinning young woman who winks flirtatiously at Hank, causing Raven to glare at her retreating back. Magda glances down at her silver engagement ring, suddenly feeling its weight - to be quite honest, she'd forgotten it was there.

"Yes," she answers stiffly, wishing it wasn't so, hyper-aware of Erik's presence at her side. He smells of metal, of a day in the sun, of the dust of stalls, and if she were to let her leg fall just slightly to the side their thighs would be pressed together. "His name is Andrew. We are to be married in sixteen weeks."

"I wouldn't worry, Erik," Charles says bracingly, already halfway down his drink, a strange liquid which appears to change colours in front of Magda's eyes. "She doesn't love him."

Magda flushes immediately, but Erik simply levels a cool gaze at Charles, a slight smirk curling one corner of his mouth. "You really must learn to control your mind-reading when you're drinking, Charles."

"Don't be embarrassed, Magda!" Charles says cheerfully. "There's no shame in marrying someone to get a better life for yourself!"

"Don't forget to take all his money in the divorce," Raven says wickedly, and Magda drinks to hide her burning face, feeling Erik's gaze on her all the while.

The night devolves into storytelling and laughter around the table, the empty glasses mounting up and her head spinning, and Erik's arm around her, and her hands in his hair as she brings his mouth to hers, and the clearing, and the grass soft beneath her skin when they topple down. Erik's eyes are all she sees, as a gesture from him has her engagement ring flying from her finger and into the darkness.

They love each other, even if it is only for the evening. When the sun rises, they both remember that she is from a different world than his, and she finds another portal and returns home, tears stinging in her eyes and the flower held tightly in her hand, the one reassurance that it wasn't all a fantastic dream. Her belly begins to swell soon after, and Andrew rages at her, the wedding called off. The town looks on her with judgement in every gaze, and she has nowhere to go and no one to turn to.

The Starks take her in, a curious couple who live on the outskirts of town, who miss their own son. Anthony Stark disappeared when Magda was just a child, and she remembers talking with Victoria when they were supposed to be concentrating on lessons, deciding that someone from Clypea had taken the boy from his parents. Howard is a gentle man, who offers her a place to stay and help with caring for the babes in her belly in exchange for light housekeeping.

The moon is full once again the night she gives birth, a boy and a girl, twins squalling in her arms. She names them Wanda and Pietro, sees the hints of Erik in their features and keeps her tears to herself. A terrible bout of winter cold takes her son when her children are barely five years old, and she fears it will take her daughter too, that the blood of the stones is not strong.

But her daughter fights, and she lives, and she thrives. Magda admires her dark hair and her green eyes as she grows, the ethereal look of her that might betray the magic that runs in her blood. When Wanda grow old enough to wonder why she doesn't have a father, she tells her a story of a soldier who went to war and died, shows her the rose and tells them he gave it to her in lieu of a ring he couldn't afford, tells the story so many times she almost believes it herself.

Wanda Maximoff grows up in a village of ordinary people, with no idea of her extraordinary heritage.

* * *

By the time the sun raises her golden face over the horizon on the dawn of her eighteenth birthday, Wanda has grown into a beautiful young woman. She is almost the image of her mother, the same shining spill of dark hair, the same long eyelashes, the same skin as pale and soft as freshest snowfall. Except for her eyes.

Shop assistants and schoolboys have written odes to those eyes. They mark her as something magical, something bright in those emerald depths. Those are the eyes that blink at her mother while they wait for Howard and Maria to return from town with the cake and champagne that befits a birthday, and Wanda breaks the silence that has descended between them to say, "So...that story about my father being a soldier who went to war-"

"A lie, sweetheart," Magda says, and hurt fills her daughter's eyes. "You have to understand, most people in this village don't even believe that Clypea exists. People were more likely to believe that I had an affair with a soldier passing through than the tales of our collective childhoods being true."

"My father was Clypean?" Wanda asks, everything in her spinning. All the eighteen years of her life, she has believed herself a soldier's daughter, fatherless through a heroic sense of selflessness. She has carved herself into the rock of being the daughter of Magda Maximoff and a nameless soldier, and now the waves have come to erode away her sense of self. "Then...he had magic?"

"He was a metalworker," Magda says, and her face softens in that wistful way of a long-lost love. "That rose...he made it with nothing more than his mind. He gave it to me when we met. That began our night together."

"Do you think he might still be there?" Wanda asks, a note of desperation shaking her voice. For people who have grown up with two parents and a sibling and a home that is theirs, it cannot be easy to understand the feeling of not belonging. Wanda has always been of two worlds, caught somewhere between truth and story. Dreaming of distant lands and starlit skies, a father who would come home after so many years. Or perhaps, a father who she will find herself.

"I hope he is," Magda says, gazing through the window of the manor, down to the wall that seems innocuous in the dusklight. "I hope you can find him."

"Mother-"

"There is a red full moon tomorrow night," Magda says, her eyes urgent. "You can go to Clypea. You can find your father."

Wanda has always believed that she was meant for adventure. It was a sad realisation to know what the world expected of her. A polite girl, a pretty woman, a girl who would marry a rich man and bear his children and rarely leave the village by the wall. Not a girl who would venture out under the flush of the red moon and pull at the edges of reality until she found the portal that would welcome her into the land of the unknown.

She is dressed in her mother's old dress, a simple blue dress for travelling, and she stares around at the land her mother described. Gone are the colourful market stalls, the crowds of people showing their strange magic to thrilled crowds. The people who pass her scurry by with heads down and hoods up, and she watches fingers tap purses strung on gold cords around waists, hands ghost across knives strapped to hips and thighs. Her mother described a land full of light and laughter, and for a moment Wanda wonders if she might have crossed the wrong portal somehow.

But she concludes that it would be wildly unlikely for her to live in a village that holds a portal to two magical lands. This must be Clypea, but wildly changed from the place her mother found. Even the sunlight seems faded somehow, weak and watery, and everything feels like a dark alley on a moonless night. Endless, deep, and dangerous.

A man nearly knocks her off her feet barrelling past her when she makes her first cautious steps towards the inn that appears open, and her temper rises as she spins on her heels, her hair flying. "Watch where you're going!" she snarls, and the man turns slowly to face her.

He's _blue_. And she knows that her mother saw the strangest of creatures, a man made of metal and a dark-haired green giant and a boy who could read minds. She knows her father could move metal with his mind. But somehow knowing that is different to seeing this man in front of her, his skin blue, his eyes surrounded by thick smears of black make-up that traces lines down his cheeks and jaw and beneath the edges of the heavy helmet he wears.

"You _dare_?" he asks, his voice cold and hard as thunder, and perhaps someone else would be intimidated.

But Wanda was born out of wedlock to a woman whose fiancé left her for having an affair. She was raised by a couple considered negligent parents. She bore the pain of realising the lack of opportunity she had for her future. And she is not easily frightened by even the most determined of men. "You walked into me, sir," she says haughtily. "You are not the one who should be angry."

"You _dare_ presume to tell me what I should do?!" the man roars, and he's moving towards her, swinging the hammer resting on his shoulder down to his side. It looks heavy, gleaming with some metal she's never seen before. "I ought to rip your pretty head from your shoulders to teach you a lesson-"

"Ronin, don't you think pretty heads are better left on shoulders." And Wanda blinks, because the voice came from a raccoon. A heavy gun is hoisted over his shoulder, and then a tree lumbers out of the shadows towards the blue man. The creatures of her mother's story, the ones that sounded the craziest. And she's seeing them with her own eyes, seeing the blue man cast wary eyes at them.

"I do not answer to you, vermin."

"This girl is my booty," the raccoon says. "I'm making five hundred units to get her to Captain Romanoff safe and sound. And even you don't wanna cross the captain."

Ronin stares at the raccoon, then Wanda. He snarls, and stomps away, his hammer dragging on the ground and kicking up trails of dust. Wanda stares after him for a long moment before the raccoon sneers and says, "A thank you might be nice, lady."

"I am Groot."

Blinking at the tree, the three simple words it just somehow spoke, Wanda looks back to find the raccoon scrutinising her, his black eyes narrowing at her. "Magda?"

"No...she's my mother," Wanda says, and the raccoon narrows his eyes at her. "Are you...Rocket? And Groot? She told me about you."

"And I'm sure we were the greatest part of her visit to Clypea," Rocket says, and then he gives her another considering look. "Shit. She got cosy with the metalworker, didn't she? You his kid?"

"You know my father?" Wanda asks, with all the breathless hope of one who sees something she has always wanted laid out in a feast before her. "Where is he?"

"Shit, kid, no one's heard of your father in...must be eighteen years," Rocket says. "We know Shaw got rid of him for giving away that flower to your mother. Shaw always was a hard-ass, up to the day he died. No idea where your dad or any of his motley crew went after that." He studies her and then says, "Look, your mom came to Clypea when it was still a tourist trap. It's a dangerous place now. There's this madman after the infinity stones, and you shouldn't hang around long enough to get caught up in it."

"I can handle myself-"

"Lady, you were here five minutes and nearly got your head knocked off by a Thanos lackey," Rocket says, and she flushes. "Best thing is for you to go home and forget that you know you're half magic."

Wanda raises her chin defiantly and insists, "No. I came here to find my father, and I'm going to do just that. I want to know where I came from."

Rocket sighs, leaning the weight of his tiny frame on his gun. "I can't help you with that, lady."

"I am Groot."

"I _know_ what the rumours say, but that's dangerous-"

"I am Groot."

"Yes, I'm sure Quill probably _could_ help, but I don't wanna watch another round of he flirts to make Gamora jealous and she totally falls for it-"

"You can...understand him?" Wanda asks, her gaze slanting to the tree, and Rocket eyes her suspiciously.

"You don't speak Groot?" he asks, and she shakes her head. "What are they teaching kids across the portal these days? Honestly, things were good when kids from your world crossed over all the time. Before Strange got all stern about maintaining the integrity of the portals and not letting so many mortals get all fish out of water over here."

"Can we discuss my father?" she asks, and Rocket raises his black eyes to the sky. "Does your...Groot know where he might be?"

"We're not dumb enough to take you there," Rocket says, and Groot stares at him until he groans. "But, if you wanna find your dad, you can ask around for the Avengers."

"Who are they?" she asks, breathless at the mere name. They sound like the stuff of storybooks.

"The protectors of Clypea," Rocket says, though the noble name is somewhat ruined by the sarcasm weighing his tone. "They protect the infinity stones, hold back people who want them to do bad shit, so on and so shit. They might know where your dad is."

"Thank you!" she says, forever the polite young woman she was raised to be, and she darts away into the crowds.

As her blue skirt vanishes between two people, Rocket turns to Groot and says, "I don't know who's weirder. The mother, or the daughter."

"I am Groot."

"You're right. Definitely the daughter."

* * *

"Excuse me?" Another pair of eyes flicker over her, impatient. "Do you know where I might find the Avengers?"

If we were to follow the story of the man suddenly confronted by a dark-haired girl who is clearly unaware of the social conventions of Clypea, we would know that he has a daughter to get home to, a family to protect from the darkness circling the land that was once so light. But this is not his story, and Wanda is not to know that about him. She only thinks that he is rude when he sniffs at her and walks off without another word.

"You're looking for the Avengers?" She spins on her heel and finds a man staring at her. A curious man, with crimson skin, red metal plating his face, a yellow cape swinging behind him and a stone glowing softly gold at the centre of his forehead.

"Yes," she says, trying to project confidence. "I need them to help me find my father."

"I've never seen you before," the man says, and in an instant he's much close to her. Crowding into her space, so much taller than her, bending her backwards like a flower in a rainstorm, and her heart is pounding, heat collecting in her cheeks. "Who are you working for?"

"I work for old Mr. Miller at the grocer's-"

"Are you with the Black Order?" the man asks, his eyes searching her face. "You consider Thanos your father, don't you? I will not be tricked into escorting you to him."

"I don't even know what the Black Order is!" she insists, and when he doesn't move she pokes him in the chest to push him back. " _Honestly_ , the people here are so _rude_. I'm just _lost_!"

"You're...not with Thanos?" the man asks, and he's blinking blue eyes at her, and maybe she's flustered for a few reasons more than just a complete stranger accusing her of being some sort of criminal.

" _Who_ is Thanos?" she asks, and the man's face darkens. "Who are you, for that matter?"

"Oh, um...ma'am, I'm dreadfully sorry about that," he says, and something about the gentle shyness sets her head to spinning. "I just...I am new, you see. Um...is there a name I may call you?"

"Wanda Maximoff," she says, and he dips his head in acknowledgement. "Who are you?"

"I am Vision," he says, and she blinks for a moment at the name. But then, she did just almost get her head knocked off by a blue man and have her life saved by a talking, gun-toting raccoon and an intelligent tree. A red man with a slightly odd name is not the strangest thing about Clypea so far. "I am terribly sorry, Ms. Maximoff. I'm looking for the Black Order, you see-"

"And you thought you'd find them by confronting random girls alone on the streets?" she asks, and he ducks his head in embarrassment. "You're terribly naive."

"I was born yesterday," he says, and she tilts her head at him in confusion.#

"Well, you could at least do me the decency of explaining who the Black Order are," she says, and brightness blooms on his face. He's handsome, a lovely smile lifting his face, and she is unsteady in the world. No schoolboy or shop assistant in her tiny village has made her feel like this.

"Oh, Ms. Maximoff, you must be new in town to not know who they are," he says. "They are the children of Thanos!"

"And who is Thanos?" she asks, and he gapes at her. "I...am not from around here."

"Thanos is a warlord, a mad Titan who lives in the castle beyond the dark cliffs!" Vision says, and Wanda stands there watching the movement of his lips and wondering how she has somehow fallen straight into a fairytale from her childhood. "He wants to control Clypea himself! He has been trying for _years_ to steal the infinity stones and control their power himself! The Avengers are trying to stop him!"

"You know the Avengers?" she asks.

And he straightens up, his chest swelling with pride. "I _am_ an Avenger, Ms. Maximoff."

"Could you take me to them?" she asks, opening her eyes wide and pleading, the look that has always worked to persuade her mother. And Vision must be even more susceptible, if his wide eyes are anything to judge by. "I...you may not believe me, but I am from across the portal."

"You're _mortal_?!" he gasps, and she nods. "Oh, Ms. Maximoff, you must go home. Clypea is too dangerous for mortals with Thanos and his children running around!"

"I came to find my father," she says, and Vision seems to soften. "My mother crossed the portal almost nineteen years ago and shared a night with him. I am half of Clypea. I want to know who he is." The words are warm on her lips, a precious treasure held tight to her heart, when she says, "His name is Erik."

"I'm afraid the name means little to me, Ms. Maximoff," Vision says, and some of the hope deflates from her. "But I'm sure one of my teammates will know. I will take you to them. Not a thing happens in Clypea without Stephen Strange knowing of it."

"And who is he?"

"The Sorcerer Supreme. Protector of the Time Stone." He stares for a moment at the utter confusion on her face, and asks, "You really know none of this?"

"In my world, Vision, Clypea is considered a tale for children," she says, and his brow furrows. "You are a fairytale to me."

And oh, how that flippant remark will come to mean something different in the coming days and weeks of our story.

* * *

Clypea is a land of magic and monsters and myth. The town spills out into woods and mountains, the manor houses of the rich, the straw roofs of the poor, the distant dark cliffs where Thanos and his children wait. Vision seems confident of where he is going, and Wanda lets him guide her, trusting him not to lead her into danger.

It's good, then, that it's not his fault when they are confronted by a pair of the Black Order. A man with grey skin and a scythe over one shoulder and a blue-haired woman, both of them smiling when Wanda shrinks behind Vision. She has no weapon, no experience fighting but for play with other children her age. He might be able to do something against them.

"We heard rumours," the man says, his scythe gleaming sharp in the weak sunlight, his thin lips curled in a dangerous smile. "Stark has to be crazy. Trying to make a person out of a stone."

"I'm here, aren't I?" Vision asks, and the two villains smile.

"Who's the girl?" the woman asks, and Wanda shrinks further into the shadows, terror tying her tongue.

"Leave her," Vision says, and he's stern and sure and protecting her. It's enough to make a heroine of a tale swoon. "She has nothing to do with this. Go and leave us."

"The stone first, robot."

"I'm a synthezoid, actually," Vision says, so light it's almost pleasant, and the pair snarl. "And you will not touch the Mind Stone. Thanos will fail."

"Then I suppose you don't know that Strange gave up his power over time?" the man says, and Vision freezes. "You should have been with them, robot, not traipsing around the woods with strange girls. It was beautiful. Lord Thanos nearly killed Stark, you know. Strange gave up the stone to protect him."

"Then you have no need of my stone," Vision says. "With just one stone, Thanos can wipe out anyone who stands in his way."

"My lord doesn't want to _wipe out_ Clypea," the woman says, her hissing voice sending shivers up Wanda's spine. "He wants to shape it. Mould it to perfection. He can only do that with all six stones."

"Nevertheless, he will not touch the mind stone," Vision says, and he's so brave, and so _foolish_. He's outnumbered, their weapons are far better, and Wanda can be no help in the fight.

Then there's a triumphant cry from the woods, and a man comes _flying_ out of the trees. He slams feet-first into one of their assailants and sends him sprawling, and before the woman can so much as blink another blur has snatched the scythe from the man's scrambling hand and holds them at its point. This new ally is a woman, red hair flying, and she's smiling. "We don't wanna kill you," she says, and her voice is so sweet it edges on steel. "But we will."

The woman goes to the man, pulling him upright, and glares up at the redhead with a look of such hatred it makes Wanda's heart still. "You won't get the chance again," she snarls, and the two disappear in a haze of blue light. The scythe flies from the redhead's hand and follows them, and the clearing is still again.

"Everyone alright?" comes the question from the flying man, and he's grinning. Like this is all a game, like Wanda wasn't just helpless against two very dangerous creatures who work for an even more dangerous one. "Didn't the wings work great this time, Nat?"

"You crash-landed in those bushes over there," the redhead says, rolling her eyes, and the man just grins.

"I'm getting closer to sustained flight!"

"You two are being so rude," comes another voice, and a blonde man enters the clearing, leaning down to brush fingers over the footprints left behind by the Black Order pair. There's a metal shield slung over his back, shining and undented, and he looks up at Wanda and Vision. "Are either of you hurt?"

"No," Wanda says, and looks at the trio who have just saved them. "Thank you. But...who are you, who were they, and what the _hell_ is going on?!"

"You must be Captain Romanoff," Vision says, and she expects him to walk to the man. But it's the redheaded woman whose hand he shakes, and Wanda is openly staring. "I've heard many tales about you."

"All bad, I hope," she says, grinning, and her eyes slant to Wanda. "Who's this?"

"Ms. Maximoff is not from around here," Vision says. "She's from...where did you say you were from, Ms. Maximoff?"

"I told you, Vision, just call me Wanda," she says, and he looks away from her, gold flickering in his cheeks. "I'm from Westview. It's this tiny little village...in England."

" _England_?!" the flying man exclaims, and she nods. " _We're_ from England!"

"Sam, you're scaring her," the blonde man says, and he's the one who finally straightens up to give her some answers. "They were Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight, of the Black Order. We've had run-ins with them before."

"And _I_ am Captain Natasha Romanoff," the redhead says, pride shining in her eyes. "These idiots are my first mates, Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson. And as idiot number two says, we are from England. We all crossed the portal a long time ago, looking for adventure."

"Of course, back then we meant hiring a ship and floating around the lakes, not fighting Thanos' children and trying to stop him getting the stones," Sam says, and he unbuckles his wings to drop them to the ground. "Where are you two headed?"

"I am escorting Ms. Maximoff to the Avengers," Vision says, and Wanda rolls her eyes at yet another use of her formal title. "She is looking for her father."

"His name is Erik Lehnsherr," she says, desperate now. She has been in Clypea for hours, and she's done little except walk around the woods. "Have you heard of him?"

"Not in a long time," Steve says, and disappointment hollows her out. "It'll take you weeks to get to the Avengers walking. They've had to move to a place further away after Thanos attacked and took the Time Stone."

"You could _fly_ ," Sam suggests, eyes gleaming, and Wanda eyes the pack holding his wings. "Oh, not like that. Those are my wings only."

"He has some grand dream about flying across the lakes-"

"I'm less than six months away from it, Rogers, you just _watch_ -"

The two men bicker on, and Natasha looks at Wanda. "If you don't mind sharing quarters with them, you are welcome to my ship," she says, and gives a slight smile. "We can take you to the Avengers. Or as close as my ship can get."

"I thought he said we would fly," Wanda says, and Natasha smiles.

"Of course we will. They don't have flying ships on the other side of the portal yet?"

* * *

Wanda has always been told that love creeps up on a person. That one day you could look at a person and see them haloed in gold and realise that you want to spend the rest of your life with them. And she had always daydreamed of that moment, thinking it would be with one of the boys she was schooled with, or perhaps a stranger in a town square a long way from tiny, cobblestoned Westview. She never thought it would be with a crimson-skinned man made of metal and magic, when she looked up at him across a chessboard on a flying pirate ship and he took her breath away.

In the following days, she tries to pinpoint the moment at which she fell in love with Vision. Was it when he held her one late night on the desk of the ship as she quietly told him of being a daughter without a father, a twin without a brother, a girl half of one world and half of another? When he told her how he felt out of place, artificial in the world, and reassured her they saw each other. Perhaps it was earlier, when he pushed her behind him in the face of the Black Order even though he was the one they wanted. Or perhaps it was at the moment they met, the lightning bolt moment that her parents shared nineteen years ago in the Clypea town square.

Regardless of when it was, by the time the ship sets down on land and they're waved away by Natasha, Sam, and Steve, she is sure of her feelings. She is in love with Vision, with the man who makes her feel gold when he touches her, the man she finds staring in wonder at sunrise and sunset and star-studded skies. And she has precisely no idea of how to tell him.

"I believe the stronghold is just a day or three's walk from here," Vision says, and she sighs at the very thought. "There is an inn on the way, Sam told me. We can stop there when we reach it."

It's only reluctantly that she starts to walk with him. Being alone with him has her whole body alive, the words at the tip of her tongue aching to be said, and she has to fidget to distract herself, searching for any topic of conversation to fill the silence. "What will you do when you've delivered me to the Avengers?" she asks, and he turns to look at her, those blue eyes filling her world.

"Find and stop Thanos," he says. "That is what I was made for."

"But what then?" she asks, and he looks at her, confused. "You must have things you want to do when your mission is over. Places you want to see?"

"I don't know," he says, and pauses in his walking, his face falling into brooding. "I have never given much thought to who I would be when my mission is complete."

"Well...maybe you could come visit Westview sometime?" she suggests, and his gaze moves to hers. And she hopes that the warmth between them hasn't only been felt by her, that his heart has been stirring too, that the fairytale something growing between them is not all in her head. "I would be happy to show you around. Not that there's much to see, but-"

"You would be there," he says softly. "And you are the only sight I need to see." Gold curls bright into his face, and he looks away. "Forgive me, Ms. Maximoff. That was...inappropriate."

"Your words are beautiful," she says, barely a breath on her parted lips, and their eyes meet in the silence. The world narrows to just them, warmth and want and tension, and his eyes drop to her lips.

Then the harsh whinny of a horse drags them apart, and she looks up to see a black carriage pulled by ebony horses moving down the dirt trail towards them. It slows to a halt, and the man who appears in the window looks faintly annoyed, his dark hair gathered around his haughty face. "Don't you know to step out of the road when a carriage is coming?" he asks sharply.

"I'm sorry, sir, we...became distracted," Vision says, and the man snorts. "Go on your way with our apologies."

"You don't look as if you'll last the night on the road," he says, and reluctantly opens the door to his carriage. "Get in. I'll take you to the next inn."

"Thank you," Vision says, and he holds out a hand to help Wanda climb the three short stairs. "May I ask your name, sir?"

"Loki."

"Brother of Thor?" Vision asks, awe in his voice, and Loki rolls his eyes.

"I am an Odinsson in my own right, you know," he says irritably. "I am more than just 'brother of Thor'."

The carriage rattles on over the rough road, and Wanda is so aware of being pressed against Vision on the narrow bench, their hips and thighs touching, their knees knocking together. Natasha outfitted her more appropriately than the blue dress, dark leather breeches and a red coat that makes her look like other people of Clypea, and she wonders if Vision thinks she is beautiful. There was a moment between them before Loki and his carriage ruined it, a moment when she hoped to be kissed. She seeks another such moment with him.

But any thought of romance is ruined when there is a rumble and the roof of the carriage is torn right off. The horses _scream_ and run, and Vision throws himself over Wanda's body to protect her, setting her heart to pounding. Loki is grabbed by a huge purple fist and thrown to the ground, a huge silhouette looming over him. "Where is the stone?" The voice belonging to the silhouette slices straight through Wanda, low as thunder and twice as dangerous.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Loki says, somehow maintaining the distant haughtiness to his voice even in the face of the enormous man who must be Thanos.

"You swore fealty to me, Odinsson," Thanos says. "And you stole the Space Stone. I know you did. Hand it over, and do not force me to kill you."

"I never swore to you," Loki snarls, and Wanda can only see a sliver of what is happening, her view blocked by Vision covering her, protecting her. She can see Loki's pale, pinched face and the broadness of Thanos looming over him. "You have lost, Titan. The Avengers will stop you. You will never be a god."

"Loyalty to your brother," Thanos remarks. "How sweet."

And then Wanda _screams_ , muffled into Vision's chest, when Thanos pierces a sharp lance straight through Loki's chest. The man collapses without a sound to the ground, and Thanos reaches down to root through his pockets and comes up with a shining blue stone, his smile terrifying and triumphant. And Vision's arms are around her, pulling her into his body, and they're _flying_ , his cape a wash of sunlit gold behind them. When she looks back, she finds Thanos' head tilted up at them. And she swears that she can see him smile.

"Goodness gracious, you look terrible!" comes the exclamation when they stagger in the front door of the inn Loki was supposed to bring them to. The owner of that concerned voice is a lovely woman, her silver hair piled up in a mass of curls, and she rushes across the room to help Wanda inside, her legs hardly able to hold her, the horror of the past few hours rushing through her head. She can't stop seeing Loki's body crumple to the ground, and Vision is a steadying presence behind her, his hand still at her hip. "What happened?"

"Thanos," Vision says, and the woman blanches. "We don't mean to impose, but I hoped you might have a room for the evening."

"Hank!" the woman shrieks, and a silver-haired man appears from a side door. "We have guests. Draw a bath upstairs."

"Scott!" the man shouts, and a much younger man appears, grinning. "Draw a bath upstairs."

" _Hank_ ," the woman admonishes, rolling her eyes, and the old man shrugs.

"He is our receptionist, it is his job to deal with guests," he says, and vanishes again. And the woman is turning back to them, a maternal smile on her face that makes Wanda's heart quiver, thinking of her own mother. Wondering if Magda is worried about her, looking out at the wall and hoping that she is alright. She has already had such an adventure that she wonders if her mother will believe her stories.

"I do apologise for my husband," she says. "Welcome to The Ant and The Wasp. I'm Janet, and my silent husband is Hank."

"Did you used to own a pub?" Wanda asks, and brightness blooms on Janet's face.

"Yes, by the same name, much closer to the square," she says, and Wanda can picture her face eighteen years younger. "But things became dangerous, and we decided it was a better business decision to have an inn for all those people moving away from the crowded places. We still have a bar, if either of you would like a drink. What are your names?"

"I'm Vision," Vision says, and Wanda hopes she isn't imagining the way his face softens when he looks at her. "And this is Wanda Maximoff. We are on our way to the Avengers to find her father."

"Quite the adventure!" Janet says, smiling. "You must rest before the last leg of your journey. If you need anything, just come looking. Scott or I will help you, perhaps Hank if you're especially lucky."

The room awaiting them has pale walls and a wide bed at its centre, the sheets a lovely crisp white, and exhaustion slams into Wanda at the sight of the bed. "Do you mind if I take the bath?" Vision asks softly when the door slides shut behind them, and she shakes her head.

He's shielded from her gaze only by a screen, and she flushes to think of them alone in a room together. On Natasha's ship, they were never really alone, Sam never far from dragging them onto the deck to explain the finer points of the wings he was building for themselves, or Natasha taking Wanda down to the brig to teach her a little hand-to-hand combat to allow her to hold her own in Clypea. The knife the captain gave her is tucked into a holster at her hip that she unbuckles and drops beside the bed, easing her aching feet out of her boots and massaging her ankles.

She looks up from perusing one of the books set by the bed in time to see Vision emerge from behind the screen. He's wrapped in a white robe, tied loosely to show off a long triangle of crimson chest above the soft material, a line of the green metal Clypeans call vibranium trailing out of her line of sight, and she's blushing at being alone with the naked object of her affections. "Would you like a bath?" Vision asks. "I can call Janet to draw another-"

"I just want to thank you," she says. "For protecting me in the carriage."

"It was nothing, Wanda," he says, and he won't quite meet her eyes. "I am simply meant to protect people. That is what being an Avenger means."

"It wasn't nothing to me" she says softly, and unfolds herself from the bed, crossing the room to him. "And neither was that moment we shared before Loki's carriage came."

"The...moment?" he asks, and she nods, sliding her hands up to press against his chest, revelling in the hitch in his breath. "Wanda-"

"I hoped you were going to kiss me," she breathes. "Were you?" She lifts herself onto her tiptoes, closer to his mouth. "Will you?"

When his lips find hers, the whole world lights up gold.

* * *

Morning light spills into the room of the inn, and Wanda wakes with a cat-like stretch and a satisfied soreness in her limbs. When she turns over, the bed next to her is cold, and she shoots upright, finding her crumpled clothes and reluctantly stepping back into her boots, clattering down the stairs to find Hank and Janet drinking tea in the reception area, and the young man she believes to be named Scott leaning on the reception desk.

"You're awake!" he says brightly. "Vision left hours ago. He said he didn't want to disturb your sleep, but that he had to go and find Thanos. And that he doesn't want you to follow him and get hurt."

"She'll follow him," Hank remarks, and she looks over at him as he folds down the top of his newspaper, his shrewd gaze on her. "I remember your mother, Wanda. That group were in our pub every night, but we never saw her again. Your father pined after her for months."

"You knew my father?"

"Shit, kid, we were there the night your parents met," he says, and eyes her suspiciously. "The night, I presume, that resulted in you. Erik was a good kid, you know. Quieter than his friends. He never deserved what happened to him."

"What happened?" she asks with breathless eagerness. She has never been closer to finding her father, to learning the beginning of her story, and Hank's gaze darkens.

"Shaw sold him to Thanos," he says, and black rage descends over Wanda. "Got himself killed, of course. Asked for more money than His Lordship wanted to give. As far as anyone knows, Erik has been with Thanos for fifteen years. His slave."

"Where?"

"The castle in the cliffs," Hank says. "Thanos calls it Sanctuary II. He's had your father constructing something...a gauntlet, of sorts. Strange believes he wants to use it to hold all six infinity stones and harness their power for her own." He sighs and says, "If your love has gone there, then he's in over his head. Thanos won't hesitate to rip that stone out of his head and kill him."

"I can stop him," she says, her fingertips ghosting over the knife at her hip. "I don't care if I'm just a mortal with a knife, I-"

"Oh, I think you've got a lot more than a knife to your name," Janet says, giving Wanda a disconcertingly probing look over the rim of her teacup. "You are the daughter of magic, Wanda. The power of the stones runs in your blood. And perhaps you should learn what it did to you before you fight an enemy like Thanos."

"I'm...magic?" she asks, and it's as if even saying the words awakens a thrum in her blood. Something calling to her, something long slumbering deep in the fabric of her, clawing its way to the surface. Crying out to be useful, and when she raises a hand to rub her aching temples a swathe of red dances on the air. It glows and spins before it fades into mist, and she gape at herself.

"Your father is a powerful metalworker," Hank says, watching as she gestures again and watches the red swirl from her fingertips. "I dare say you are just as powerful."

"Then...I can use this to fight Thanos!" she says, clenching her fist, feeling the new thrum of her power inside her. "I can help Vision!"

"Good luck!" Scott calls cheerfully after her as she leaves the inn. The door swings shut on her single night of reprieve and she steps in the climax of her story.

* * *

Sanctuary II is a crumbling castle surrounded by sharp cliffs. Thanos chose it for its defendable location, and no Avenger has yet tried to attack it. Every plan they have seems to fall through, their members constantly injured or afraid, and no one in Clypea dares to wander near the cliffs. They would never expect a lone woman to get close, never mind get inside.

But Wanda has. Almost. She stands at the window, peering inside, surrounded by the song of the mournful wind amongst the whorls of the cliffs. A horrified sound tears itself from her chest when she sees Thanos standing over Vision's prone form, his low voice tinged with taunting, and she wants to break down the wall and run to him and kill Thanos before he can form a single word. But the adventure novels of her childhood taught her that a full-scale assault is the easiest path to defeat, so she steps around the sides of the castle in her boots and finds a hole in the wall to creep through.

She's in a workshop of some sort, and there's a reptilian creature standing over a human man, a whip in his clawed hand. "Faster," the creature hisses, and the man winces. "Our lord is almost ready. The Mind Stone will be his."

"He is _not_ my lord," the man snarls, and Wanda looks at him from the shadows. When his hands move, so does the metal creating an enormous golden gauntlet on the table in front of him, and her heart shudders as the realisation crashes into her.

She is looking at her father. His dark hair and his green eyes, just like hers, and she doesn't think before she's raising her hands, allowing the anger at seeing her father enslaved to a monster to flow through her. Red bursts out of her, twisting through the air, and it reaches the creature just as it looks up.

Her magic tears into his mind, ripping him apart, and his body collapses silently to the floor. And the man, Erik, her _father_ , slowly stands, staring at her. "Magda?"

"She's my mother," she gasps, and Erik's eyes go wide. "I'm Wanda. I think...I'm your _daughter_."

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen," she says, and there are tears dancing in Erik's eyes. "My mother told me about my heritage on my birthday. I crossed the portal to find _you_ , I-"

"You seem to have gotten yourself tangled in another story altogether," he says, and smiles, and there are tears in her eyes. "Oh, my darling girl. You look just like your mother."

"She always says I look just like you," she says breathlessly, and then Erik has crossed the room in three long strides and has her in his arms. He smells of metal and dust, and she buries her head in her father's chest and clutches at him, blinking back tears.

"You should run," he says when they finally break apart, and she shakes her head. "Wanda, I have delayed as long as I could. But the gauntlet is finished. He has the last stone ripe for the taking. Thanos is going to win, and the best thing is for you to cross the portal as fast as you can. If we find Stephen Strange, he can-"

"I'm not leaving without rescuing Vision," she says, and Erik's brow creases in confusion. "The man Thanos has. He...he's special. I won't watch him die."

"You came to find me, and you found him," Erik observes, and she flushes. "If you insist on this fight, you must at least let me help."

"Whatever you wish, Father," she says, and the way his face softens when she names him that makes her heart sing. Then she summons red to her fingertips, and Erik gestures to rip the metal wall in half, sending her through the gap with the rage of a fight flying through her.

She has never fought before, but next to her father she falls into it like dancing in the town square at the Midsummer celebrations. Thanos sends his two other children after them, the pair who confronted her and Vision on the road, but she can fight them. She watches herself as if separate from her own body, her hands flying through the air trailing glowing scarlet, and she catches her father smiling at her in pride.

The Black Order soon lie dead in the room, and Thanos finally deigns to look at her. "Quite the showing, little witch," he says, his eyes on her. "But you cannot stop me."

"Let him go," she snaps, her voice harsh and dangerous, and Thanos just chuckles.

"He is the last piece of the puzzle," he says, and Vision is shaking in his bonds, the stone at his forehead glowing even brighter than before. "His life means nothing."

"It is everything to me," she says, and throws the knife from her hip. It's a terrible throw, but then her father raises his hand and the blade finds its target in Thanos' chest. Enough to surprise him, enough for her to run to Vision and spring him free with a sharp jet of red, to pull him away from Thanos and ask, "Are you alright? Did he hurt you?"

"You have magic?" he asks, and she nods, smiling slightly. "Wanda...you came for me."

"Of course I did," she says. "I love you."

Thanos straightens up before Vision can reply, tugging the knife out of his chest and weighing it deliberately in one hand. "How sweet, little witch," he says, and she pushes Vision behind her just as he did with her when the Black Order attacked them, raising one hand holding a globe of scarlet. "But you cannot save them both."

Everything slows for a moment when he throws the knife. It's sailing through the air, his aim true, aimed for her father's chest. And then someone falls from the sky, a circle of spinning gold appearing out of thin air, the knife flying through it and out of another to bury itself harmlessly in the floor, the hilt quivering. Wanda is staring at a dark-haired man in a deep red cape, his eyes narrowing at Thanos, and Vision is gasping, "The Sorcerer Supreme."

"Thanos," the sorcerer says, and then he turns to look at Wanda, Vision, her father. "You have done well, young lady. We'll take it from here."

"I'll help," she says, and raises her hands, her power flowing bright.

The sorcerer eyes her, and then laughs. "You have spirit, Ms. Maximoff," he says, and the wall behind them crumbles as a group join them. A metal man, a dark-haired giant, a golden-haired man with a hammer in one hand and an axe in the other. The Avengers. And the sorcerer is giving her a considering look. "If you wish to stay in Clypea, I'm sure we can find a place for you in our team."

She fights with them. They defeat Thanos, she watches a villain die with her father on one side and the man she loves on the other, and Vision wraps his golden cape around her when they escape the crumbling ruins, holding her close. While the Avengers move around them, shouting to each other, he kisses her cheek and whispers, "I love you too."

* * *

Clypea is a beautiful place for a wedding. And the bride is even more beautiful, her dark spill of hair pinned up with her mother's gentle hands, her white dress fitted tight to her figure. The town square is filled with revellers, the Avengers out in full force, a pirate captain and her first mates dressed in their finery. A mother and father proudly watching their daughter swear herself to a man forever, their hands linked for the first time in almost twenty years.

It is not the usual ending to a fairytale. The bride is not a princess, the groom not a prince. They are heroes, Avengers. They did not meet when he climbed a tower to find her, or braved a dragon to rescue her. She was the one to rescue him from a madman who wanted the stone that glows at his forehead for his own. The bride lifts her own veil with a mist of red from one slender hand, and the groom's crimson skin flushes gold as he makes his vows to his beautiful bride.

But this is a fairytale, nonetheless. When the Sorcerer Supreme Stephen Strange, the highest authority in Clypea, announces to the gathered guests that Wanda Maximoff is officially married to Vision, the square fills with cheers. They dance through the night, the stars winking down as they all come out to watch the love the two share, and Wanda reaches up to kiss her husband, her hand fitted to the curve of his cheek.

Clypea knows peace without Thanos. The portals are open again, allowing anyone to move through the country and see the wonder for themselves. Howard and Maria Stark were reunited with their long-lost son, allowed to meet their daughter-in-law and granddaughter. Erik and Magda reunited, he chose to leave Clypea forever, and they were married faster than Wanda could question her parents on more of their story. She chose to stay in Clypea with Vision and the Avengers, but she still visits Westview a few times a month. Sam built himself a set of wings that truly work, and flew over the lake on the day Wanda and Vision were reunited with the trio whose ship they fell in love on. Come dawn, they will be on the flying ship, still in their wedding clothes, Natasha at the helm guiding the ship in a perfect circle around a sun-drenched lake. They will kiss as the sun kisses the horizon, and Wanda will know that she is no longer half of anything. That she is whole. That she is home.

And, as all fairytales do, we must end with the same moment.

They all lived happily ever after.


End file.
